Intersection Logs

There is no immediately obvious tornado damage visible from the No 50 bus route, which runs from Druids Heath into the city centre via Kings Heath and Moseley.

The No. 50 bus route has been partly taken over by a firm running -- apparently -- buses that TravelWM had aged out of the fleet, painted bright yellow and undercutting TWM on fares by never cleaning the insides. TravelWM, on the other hand, has some very shiny and fancy new double-deckers, some even with those little headline-news TV screens.

The Rotunda, the iconic round office building at the end of New Street, so beloved of Birmingham citizens that they resisted all attempts to have it replaced with something more modern and practical, is being converted into apartments.

The new Bull Ring shopping centre is seriously impressive, light and airy, shiny with glass and marble and steel, shaped in flowing curves that open up to the outside streets. There's also a bookstore in there that isn't Waterstones, which is nice. (I have nothing against Waterstones, but it's nice to have an alternative, and I was disappointed when, having a perfectly good store of their own at the Bull Ring end of High Street, they took over the unique converted-bank Dillons on New Street as well.)

New Street Station is going through one of its periodic phases of having an actual manned ticket barrier. My mother wonders what the inspectors do in between times.

Here are the photos to go with the previous entry.

Approaching the Winnats Pass	Climbing the Winnats	Mam Tor, from near the top of the Winnats
Hope Valley from Mam Tor	The old Mam Tor road	Vale of Edale, from Mam Tor

here. These were all from the Thursday of the second week, which was a glorious day when we had a very good walk and saw much heather.

Heather, in closeup The thing about heather is, it covers whole hillsides and turns them purple. But it's pretty up close, too.

Rose, Whirlow Park

There are more in the gallery, and more will be added as I have time.

It's been a while since I last posted, I know. Well, let's see. On Friday we ran errands in the morning and in the afternoon walked through the woods over to Graves Park, a high and windy place where there are highland cattle and rare-breed sheep and a few leftover semi-exotic waterfowl, as well as woodland and rolling lawns and an overgrown and abandoned open-air theatre. On Saturday my sister and her family came to visit, and we did the Whirlow Park walk again, in rather better weather and enlivened by the antics of the two boys -- aged almost-seven and ten. There was a wedding reception going on at the park, and a small band playing, which made our sojourn there rather pleasant. Sunday was Sunday, a very fine thing in itself but not especially bloggable.

Today we went to Chatsworth, which is a very fine stately home, park and garden only a relatively short bus-ride away. ( Read more... )

Monday was a rather grey and gloomy day. We took our traditional walk up through Ecclesall
woods to Whirlow. ( The woods are lovely, dark and deep )
On Tuesday I woke to blue skies and sunshine, and we decided to do the Round Walk -- or at
least the half of it that we usually do. We started off in town, though, to drop off my last
film -- maybe the last ever -- at Boots, strolling through the Winter Gardens where the tall
conifer tree is already encountering the roof and pausing to admire the pair of steelworkers
fashioned in flowers and houseleeks outside the Town Hall.
( Round about and round about )

Appointment booked at US Consulate in London, thanks to my mother.

Plane tickets booked, Tucson-Manchester, ( Read more... )

I feel very British tonight. Not in a jingoistic way, just ... a sense of recognition, the same that I get when I see the faces and hear the voices as people gather at the departure gate for a flight back to the UK. I recognize the way Londoners are reacting, in a way that I didn't recognize the reactions of some Americans four years ago.

It must be beginning to be daylight in London by now. My heart goes out to the people waking up to face another day -- those who have to deal with grief, pain, uncertainty over loved ones, raw nerves or just the decision of how or whether they're going to get to work today. And I have faith that the country of my birth will continue to be itself.

And thanks to brisingamen for the pointer to jslayeruk's brilliant icon!

I've just been watching The Princess Bride, which seemed a nice way to spend a lazy evening. I saw it once before, years ago, but that time I didn't notice that bits of it were shot within a few miles of my childhood home. The moor that Wesley and Buttercup escape across is in the vicinity of the Burbage valley, if I'm not mistaken, with Higgar Tor on the skyline, and the ravine they fall down is Cavedale, near Castleton, though in my world it ends in a quiet back street, not a scary forest. I've sat on those rocks and walked among that heather all my life; it's the landscape of my heart, the place I come back to every year and know for the one true countryside.
( Photo behind the cut )

Jaggers Clough, August 2000 This is one of the steep valleys at the edge of the Kinder Scout plateau, near Edale in Derbyshire, England. It was the last day of my vacation, in late August, and the one day with perfect weather.